Knock, Knock. Who’s There? We told you about our plans to take off the second floor in this post. Today we’d like to share with you more about our plans to change where the front door was originally intended to be.

As you look from the road up to the house, you can see that the builder had placed the front door to face the road. There really is no logical way for guests to arrive at the front door other than parking at the back of the house, walking down the driveway and through the trees, and up the stone steps. Once you get up the stone steps, you arrive at the cemented patio cap. As you can see, the land slopes down from the house to the road. There are currently no steps to get up to the patio cap, but I would guess that there would need to be quite a few steps to get up there.

The picture above is the original floor plan. With a rectangular house, there are obviously 4 choices where we could put the front door – North, South, East, West. We thought it would be fun to examine each choice and see which one is YOUR favorite! So read through the pros & cons and vote for your favorite one.

1. Keep it facing south

Pros: It’s already there.

Cons: Nowhere for guests to park

           Not easily accessible, hard to get to

          Would make the back/garage door our main door

2. Change it to face east

Pros:  Working from a clean slate, not much there right now

           Expanse would be nicely broken up by a front door

Cons: Driveway is really close to this side of the house

           Septic and well lines come out on this side

3. Change it to face north

Pros:  It would be private and away from the road

Cons: Snow and cold winds would be right at our front door

           Would not be able to see visitors approaching

4. Change it to face west

This side of the house has the 18′ x 37′ bump out on it.

Pros:  Nice area for front yard

           Wouldn’t feel crowded

           Visitors could access it easier

           We would see visitors arriving

Cons:  Would make for some tricky design work to make things aesthetically pleasing

So what do YOU think we should do? Place your vote below!

We have an idea as to which direction we like best but we know this is a big project. To make sure that everything is in order, we will be seeking out an architect to make sure our vision doesn’t look odd and they don’t see any big problems. Once that gets ironed out, we’ll be posting about which one we chose!

It’s fun to FINALLY get to the design part of this project. With the oddness of it all, I’m sure it will come with some headaches. But still so much fun!!

Till next time…